Thursday, November 23, 2017

Today as I walked home I thought about how my favourite sound is the rustling of trees. "The tremor of the leaves," rather. And I thought about all the things that sound like tree leaves: Rain on a rooftop, applause, a person drowsily rolling under the bed coveres.

And the birds were politely discussing, and an ocasional suburban car drove gently by, and afar a dog was barking. And all of those were my favourite sounds.

There was even the murmur of a lawn mower in the air.

And all of these were most definetely my favourite sounds.

Perhaps, I thought, any sound is beautiful when surrounded by a blanket of silence. Any sound has its musicallity, its artistic sense, even if it's not pretty. Even if it's a baby crying, or an adult crying, a car alarm crying, a dog whining or crying*.

Downtown, no sound is beautiful. Because they compete for your attention and drown in the process. But amidst the silence, even your voice, with its slightly nasal undertones, can sound just fine.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

I recently turned 22, which makes me sad because I am officially no longer a youngling. And surely I'm not the only who thinks that 21 is the eve of adolescence????

Perhaps I've told you this, but one of my Greatest Fears is the passage of time. This is the great highbrowed psychoanlitical reason behind my constant diary-keeping, picture-taking, scrapbook-making, blog-writing and any other activity-ing that will entail wasting my life on trying to preserve it.

I fear the passage of time because it is fleeting. Because you can't quite grab it, and the more you try, the more it slips by. "Like trying to contain a river with your hands." This is a quote by no one in particular, but I am most likely not the first person to think of that metaphor either.

I like to take pictures and collect memorabilia because they are the surest and most beautiful way of preserving the moments that strung my life, and the people who gave it laughter and meaning.

This is all born out of the Great Fear of reaching the End, trying to remember what my life was, and arriving at the chilling conclusion that I have no time left, and yet did nothing relevant with the time I had.

Nothing assures me that I will in fact ever do anything relevant, but these activities at least allow me to leave something for the record: Here I was, with these people, surrounded by these places. And cheers for that.

Much love,
Ana

PS. I am no longer using the Ana Ruiz instagram account, but at 22, I am no longer scared of the stalkers or trolls either, so, if you please, you can follow me on my non-pseudonym-all-Spanish account:

Sunday, October 1, 2017

I'm not the biggest Pablo Neruda fan, in spite of our shared nationality, (in fact, in public I call him a cliché-loving sexist fool) but I will recognize a true verse when I see it, even if it does come from a cliché-loving sexist fool. One of these goes "the child who doesn't play isn't a child, and the adult who doesn't play has forever lost the child within him."

But play isn't just defying your siblings to a game of The Settlers of Catan or a match of soccer, it can be many things. In fact, Neruda's quote isn't exactly from a poem, but from an interview in which he was asked why he was such an avid collector of random stuff (such as ship figureheads), to which he answered that these things were his toys.

A toy can be anything, play can be many things, here are some of the ones I cherish the most:

Choose your ice cream based on color, and not on flavor.

Take any opportunity you might have to dress up in costume, and if opportunities do not show up, then skip them and just dress up for the sake of it.

Read. Books. With. Pictures. In. Them.

Get very exited about things like escalators and pushing the button on the elevator.

Ask questions. All the time.

Ocasionally, rebel against the norm of showers.

Say words wrong. In fact, you can just go ahead and invent your own wrong words, making them a part of your vocabulary. Let no one dare correct you. It's going to be supercallifragilistcexpiallidocious.

Watch cartoons.

Use funny socks and enjoy it immensely.

Spontaneously ug your Mom or another loved one and tell her you love her or him.

Go to the nearest park and use the playground. Particularly, the swings. Imagine that if you swing hard enough, you might be able to land on the moon or Jupiter. Swing so hard that you get a little bit scared that you might go around the bars.

Have an imaginary friend that you can talk to and have pretty important discussions with.

Enjoy a good sprint. Pretend you have wings and are flying.

Dare to wear non-color coordinated clothes.

Be overenthusiastic about going out and doing things.

Be a sticker hoarder.

Concoct unique combinations at a soda dispenser and name them after yourself.

Climb a nearby friendly tree. You might even find that the tree invites you to a interesting conversation regarding the funny behaviour of ants.

Go barefoot.

Lay on the grass to watch the sky. Forget about that annoying thing called time and it's horrible tendency to pass.

Aspiration: The long intake of breath
taken by a student on the dawn of his or her first day of class.

Attraction: The sight of perfectly
applied lipstick on lips.

Avidity: The manner in which a hungry person watches the
seconds of the microwave go slowly by as his or her lunch gets warmed up.

Craving: A woman's sudden acknowledgment of the
emptiness of her vagina.

Concupiscence: The way a person slowly
touches their own body in slow and thankful adoration.

Covetousness: An outfit that perfectly
enhances one's butt or waist.

Craze: Said of a person that uploads many pictures of
his o her pet to social media.

Cupidity: A newly discovered song that
strongly obsesses its listener. Usually this obsession manifests itself in relentless
replay, which can cut the obsession short as the listener is likely to become
tired of it.

Devotion: The taste of cheese.

Doting: The act of watching a baby sleep.

Eagerness: Synonym for flirting.

Fancy: Said of the urgent need to eat processed sugar.

Fascination: A day on which your Tumblr
feed is on-point.

Fervor: The strong heat that emanates from a person
that is talking about a cause that he or she feels strongly about. The cause is
usually political or ideological, but can also be a topic the person is fond
of, such as an artistic expression.

Fondness: The state or quality of
hugging.

Frenzy: The state of a person's mind on the first days
after discovering a new hobby.

Greed: The name given to the heartburn that is felt by
youths as they close their eyes after uploading a picture to Instagram and wait
for likes.

Tuesday, August 8, 2017

I see through the vinyl capitalist plot: It's just a way to have us hipsterish people invest in useless stuff (because, honestly, you can listen to the same music on free and accesible Youtube.)

But as of late, I have started becoming nostalgic of the epoque when I had to buy CDs in order to listen to music, because that meant having, touching, seeing that object of pure happiness, ie, the music you love.

I don't have the money or the room space right now to buy a disk player, or whatever you call those fancy shingamadigs, but if I could, I would like love to own the following vinyls:

Wednesday, August 2, 2017

This year I discovered love; it's the feeling of cardiovascular organs expanding by the mere presence of another beautiful collection of molecules. In my case, the beautiful collection of molecules form a fluffy, snowy, beautiful little puppy, and oh, if I could do anything to keep him a baby forever, trust me, I would.

Friday, July 21, 2017

I want to blog about music, about the movies I'm watching, about the books I should be reading. I want to take pictures with my DSLR and not with my phone, I want to write some stories and some poetry. I want to dress wonderfully and take pictures of all my amazing outfits. At times, I even want to ponder purposefully about politics and philosophy and stuff, and perhaps share that with you. Oh, I also have done some traveling, and it would be a shame not to share that too.

So much to do, such scarcity of time :D Hop along, blog readers of the world.

Tuesday, May 16, 2017

I'm BERI used to writing about all the semi-frivolous troubles that haunt my curly head: University, body image, politics, life, and, most importantly love. I have not been dealt a generous hand in love throughout most of my 21 years. A fling here, a something there, but most of the time, whenever I fell heads-over-heels for a guy (or gal), the persona in question either:

a) Didn't reciprocate

b) Used me and then dropped me

However, now I'm scrumptiously and wonderfully in love and, oh, hey, it WORKED. He is ideal in most of the senses I can describe, and loves me, and is a cutie pie with me, and I am just amazed at the fact that love actually exists and isn't some sort of romantic construct or media-created brainwashing enterprise.

Anyhoo, I am happy and I wish all of you can be as happy as I am. And get all the sex. Tehee.

PS. I wanted to write more about this, but yours truly used to be the kind of person to get annoyed at rubbed-in-your-face love. So I'm not going to do it. Let me know if you don't think it's annoying.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

I've been busy studying, being in love, working in politics, and being more in love. But at least the studying part is going to wane a bit in a week or so, and then, posts for the blogging world <3 ana="" love="" p="">

Saturday, April 1, 2017

One of the sad things about the classical blog format (versus the Tumblr format) is that it doesn't admit reblogging, which means that the good stuff can often become historical dust-covered data hidden in the quiet halls of The Library of the Internet.I hate that :(Here are some of my fave not-so-old posts that I nevah want to be forgotten:

Saturday, March 18, 2017

This isn't the first time that I've hinted at time on my blog; how scarce it is, how fleeting is, you know, the usual clichés. How envious I am of Hermione's time-stopping-and-reversing thingy, which allows her to study all the things, go to all the classes.
I don't have a time-stopping-and-reversing thingy.

I can't do all the exercise I want to do, read all that I want to read, write all that I want to write. Sure, I spend too much time on my phone, losing precious time on idle Whatsapp or Instagram scrolling, when I could be investing in quality time with friends&fam, or in working towards, you know, making the world a better place.

It frustrates me so much.

According to my psychologist, the problem is that "I have too many interests," which he doesn't view as a problem at all. But after two weeks in college, I feel immensely tired and immensely frustrated at the fact that I just CAN'T study all the things, go to all the meetings, do all the socializing.

I CAN'T BE PERFECT AND I WANT TO BE.

Or, better yet; I want to recognize and aprecciate my finitude, take a deep breath, read a good poem, and think "what is really so terrible about being human?"

Monday, February 20, 2017

Warning: I guess you could say this review contains spoilers, but the novel itself starts with a whole chapter of what you could call "spoilers."Before the review of this book really starts, I want to say that I felt a bit of sympathy for Philip Roth and his obvious itching temptation to italicize at least one word in every sentence he writes. Dear Philip, I also suffer from that malady. I, however, read Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery when I was in Junior High. It's a book about a girl that wants to be a writer and shares her amateur pieces with her rural school teacher, a very passionate and smart but unforgiving man, who mocks the juvenile naïveté of the obsessive italicizer. That is why, from that day on, I have felt a little bit embarrassed every time I give in to the pleasure of italics. Perhaps poor Mr. Roth would've already won the Nobel if he, too, had read Emily Climbs in Junior High.

Now, on to the review.

I generally feel guilty rating a book that's a renown masterpiece badly due to the fact that it provoked *yawns.* I mean, nobody expects the Odyssey to be lots of fun, and yet we can recognize it has a lot of literary merit, right? However, I tend to be more forgiving of boring books written, you know, two thousand and five hundred years ago*, than of books written only two decades ago which make their pages feel like groveling through steamy and endless shit.

For one, this book could've done without the endless repetition of the same, exact, thing, over, and, over, and, over, again. I do understand it can be a literary device. I've read my Beckett. But 400 pages of the same, same, same thing? Ain't nobody got time for that. I, at least, sadly a very slow reader and a college student and a person with, you know, a life don't.

And, I'm not from the USA, and have no connection to it, so my reaction to the book's theme/teaching/morale is: Another book on the failure of the American dream? How many of them are there? I read my Gatsby already, I GET IT.

Also, as a Jew, I was frankly disappointed at the lack of true Jewishness (no yiddishemames to be seen) and annoyed by yet another Woody Allen-type character (Swede's dad), created to annoy the fuck out of all mankind. (I swear, 99% of Jews aren't like Woody Allen. At least not the ones I know.) And, as a socialist, I feel that Merry and her kind were unfairly one-dimensional. (This I say because I was once, and still sort of am, an adolescent fighting with her conservative parents over politics and economics. However, I really do hope that I'm just not as short-sighted as poor demented Merry.) Anyhow, one-dimensional characters, dear Philip Roth, is another literary device that according to moi, you got wrong, in spite of the inkling of complexity we have of the Swede in the last quarter of the book. That was yum. Needed more of that.

Finally: WHY DOES HE NEVER TELL US HOW THE EFF MERRY DIED. Why!!!!! You could've given us some entertainment, you damn fool! I'd rather just think he forgot.

So, in sum: This book, meh, had it's good parts, mostly bad, can't understand what the genius of Roth is. I am not giving this book less stars because it's my father's favourite book and, as a good Jew, I respect my fifth commandment. Over and out.